


The Things That Lurk in the Woods

by yoshizora



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Gen, Multi, monster au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6807079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of some outsiders and how they find their home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [ spring ] Rin

This poor creature. 

Hanayo has little experience with the likes of these things, so all she can think to do at the moment is offer a handkerchief with a shaking hand. Every single one of her nerves is screaming at her to run, but she doesn’t. She wonders why.

Wounded beasts are more likely to lash out, aren’t they?

“I- I think they’re gone now.” Hanayo’s voice wavers and she risks a second to look behind her. The poachers’ voices had faded into the forest a while ago. It should be safe.

“It _hurts_ ,” the manticore whimpers. She’s wounded and weak, and not to mention clearly young. The huge monster Hanayo had seen crashing through the trees is nothing more than a small girl her own size, tattered wings pulled around her scratched up limbs and scorpion tail lying limp like a rope by her feet. 

“Shhh…” Hanayo helplessly continues to offer the handkerchief and her trembling legs slowly give way until she’s kneeling much too close to the manticore girl. “I won’t let them hurt you, a-alright? You’ll be okay. What’s your name?”

“… Rin,” she answers, pulling up one of her wings to hide part of her face. “Can you really fix me up? Rin wants to go kill those guys for being jerks.”

“I'll heal you, but! No killing!” Hanayo, in a moment of panic, practically throws the handkerchief at Rin. The manticore hisses in surprise and her quills bristle, and Hanayo falls backwards with a frightened squeak. But Rin remains where she is, curled up.

“They tried to kill Rin first!”  

“That still doesn’t justify it!” Hanayo finally finds her voice. She pushes her glasses up on her nose, breathing deep. The sharp smell of rust hangs around them. “…You’re hurt, and I want to help. But you can’t hurt anyone in return.”

“I wasn’t hurting anyone, just playing.” Rin goes back to hiding behind her wing like a child being scolded for bad behavior. “It’s not Rin’s fault humans can’t take a hit.”

“No hurting anyone, _please!”_

Rin completely retreats behind her wings and pulls her tail closer to herself, anxiously playing with the poisoned tip. She mumbles something. Hanayo has to lean forward to hear what she says. 

“… wouldn’t hurt _you_ , ‘cuz you’re nice and you smell good.”

“H-huh?”

“I said, you’re nice and you smell good!” Rin suddenly opens her wings with a heavy snap, crawling closer to Hanayo. There’s a tense split second before she backs off, leaving Hanayo to catch her breath and calm her racing heart. “I mean, in the flowery-good way, not in the food-good way. I like it.”

Ah, gods, no, there are way too many scary fangs in that smile. Hanayo gulps. She just wanted to save some magical beasts from illegal hunting, not end up with a strange manticore girl in her care. How did things come to this? Why did she even decide to help out a manticore? Why did this manticore have to turn out to be a weirdo? They’re vicious beasts, some of the worst around, but Rin’s lacking the violent disposition they’re known for. 

And Rin is… young, and hurt, and her face is too human (teeth aside). She crawls closer again, this time more cautious to avoid startling Hanayo, the image striking of a cat curiously approaching. 

“So what’s your name, then?” 

“H-Hanayo.”

“Hahanayo?”

“N-no! Just Hanayo!” she gasps out. Rin is practically on top of her now, the pain from her wounds apparently all but forgotten already. Behind her torn wings, Hanayo can see that scorpion tail slowly rising. It’s a sure sign of a manticore ready to strike its prey, death is approaching, she never even got to tell her parents a proper goodbye—

The handkerchief is delicately hanging off the sharp tip of Rin’s tail. Hanayo blinks and suddenly remembers she needs to breathe. 

“Are you part fairy, maybe? I think you smell a bit like a fairy. It’s really flowery and sweet.”

“U-um, no? I mean— I don’t know. Um?” She slowly, slowly picks the handkerchief with two fingers, careful not to graze herself on the stinger. “W-we should go back to my cottage. Before it starts to rain.”

“Oh, right!” 

They both clumsily stumble in their attempts to get up, Hanayo still trembling from shock and Rin bleeding all over. The sky’s already turning to dusk by the time they set off. The manticore leans against Hanayo for support, hobbling along the dirt path and dragging her tail for extra balance.

It’s been a long day, to say the least.

“No killing people, okay Rin?” Hanayo reminds her. She doesn’t want to think of the look on her parents’ faces if they ever visited to find a manticore in her house. “Promise.”

“Nyaaa… well, no one needs to know.”

“ _Rin!”_


	2. [ winter ] Nico

Winter wreaks the nights into something jagged and cruel. Rin learns the hard way exactly how fragile humans could be, and the lesson is realized too late.

Her kind typically eats the corpses of their deceased, but she knows that humans don’t do the same. Numbly, she carries Hanayo into the clearing where the wildflowers would bloom each spring, and where Hanayo had taught Rin about all the different kinds of plants. She sets her down in a soft bed of snow. The chill draws frozen blue to her face and snow dusts her lashes. Hanayo looks so _dead_.

Manticores can’t cry. They lack the tear ducts to do so.

She squints against the violent winds as she furiously claws a grave into the frozen earth. Her strength is drained; the cold weakens even the strongest of her kind, and Rin is skin and bones now. Hanayo had urged her so many times to migrate somewhere warm until the freeze let up, but Rin stubbornly stayed behind even as Hanayo grew ill and too weak to walk.

At the very least, Rin can be glad that Hanayo didn’t have to die alone.

Her wings are near frozen and her muscles scream and ache. Hanayo’s body is almost completely covered by the time Rin digs a hole large enough, and she clumsily brushes the snow off her as best she can and drags her into the shallow ditch with shaking arms. This is what humans do. They bury their dead and leave their bodies. Rin doesn’t quite understand it, because it seems like a waste, but she decides this is what Hanayo would want.

She pushes the icy dirt and snow over the body, fighting back the sick feelings in her gut as Hanayo disappears into the earth, and stumbles away between the trees.

—

Rin’s building a little house out of firewood pieces. Nico kind of wants to kick it over but she _can’t_.

“You know we’ll be burning all of that.”

“Yep!” Rin chirps without looking up, carefully arranging a roof of logs to finish. It looks more like a pile than a house but there’s some sort of geometry in it, and something that looks like it’s meant to be a chimney. She scoots backwards, tracking soot and ashes onto the floor Nico had just swept earlier, and tilts her head up expectantly.

Sometimes, Nico just doesn’t know what to say to a young beast out of her element. Without a doubt Rin belongs in the craggy mountains, not in the forest, but she’s just so cheerful that Nico doesn’t have the heart to tell her to leave. At least the company doesn’t hurt. Could be better than a goddamn manticore, but she’s good to keep when the nights are cold and Nico needs something warm to curl up against.

Speaking of which, winter is bearing down upon them and the air is stirring with snow. Rin’s sloppy wood pile is ablaze in the fireplace soon enough and Nico tosses her a plucked bird carcass. She grimaces as she watches her tear into it.

“It’ll be snowing tonight,” Nico comments without much infliction, carefully watching Rin in the corner of her vision. Manticores are susceptible to the cold. Goblins are hardy— Nico’s thick skin and inherent immunities protects her from most elements, but Rin’s in danger of freezing once the worst of the snowstorms hit.

But is Rin even aware of that? She swallows the rest of that chicken, bones and all, and cozies in too close to Nico. “Really?! Let’s play in the snow tomorrow! Rin wants to make a snowman with Nico!”

“What are you, stupid?” Feigning irritation, she pushes at Rin. “You’re not built for the cold. Why’re you even sticking around for the winter? Shouldn’t you migrate somewhere warmer?”

“Rin doesn’t wanna leave,” she simply says, settling with encircling Nico with her wing. The motion is still unsettling no matter how many times she does it.  “Because Nico might get lonely if Rin isn’t here to keep her company!”

“Hey, I was doing just fine before you decided to move yourself into my house.”

“And now you’re doing even better!”

Ugh, she’s doing that _thing_ with the eager eyes and hopeful smile. Nico’s surprised Rin’s tail isn’t wagging too— which is a good thing, she’d rather not have a poisonous stinger smacking at everything and accidentally grazing her.

After a moment, Nico huffs and turns to stare into the fire. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again— you can leave anytime you want. Get the hint?”

“Hehe, you couldn’t chase me out even if you wanted to.” She has a point.

This time Nico doesn’t move away when Rin wraps her in a warm hug. She barely thinks of the _hows_ and _whys_ of Rin’s presence here; she’s just _here_ , like she was always a part of the forest. She was here back when Nico arrived and discovered the clearing. She was still here when Nico built her house. She just always was. She always is. At this point, Nico can’t particularly imagine living without Rin’s constant energy buzzing around.

Rin, unusually quiet now, shivers and holds Nico closer when the wind rattles the windows.

—

Nico wakes up cold and shivering beneath the fur blankets, Rin’s absence a huge gaping hole in the morning. She takes her time getting up, reluctant to face the chill, but eventually makes it out the door to find breakfast and Rin. Along the way, she grumbles under her breath just for the sake of grumbling. Rin had completely ruined the layer of fresh snow that had settled around the cottage with her morning romp, and Nico can see where Rin had rolled around or simply jumped into the snow. The mental images are actually kind of endearing.

But at the same time, _manticores don’t belong in the winter_. That idiot.

“Rin!” Nico hollers into the forest. Her voice doesn’t travel far. As expected, she gets no responses except for a lonely bird’s answer, which Nico ignores.

She follows the swath in the snow Rin had left until it leads her to a small clearing. Rin is hunched over something, back turned and wings tightly folded against her back; it sounds like she’s eating something. Of course. Nico grumbles and makes a point of kicking up the snow as she makes her way over.

“Share. Gimme some of that.” She carefully steps over Rin’s tail to peer at what she’s eating. It’s something bloody, and small. A rabbit? Seems like it, and Rin had already eaten most of the head.

“Good morning, Nico!” Rin cheerfully greets her and hands over a small leg. “I caught something!”

“Yeah, yeah, good work.” A rabbit isn’t much, certainly not when shared between a manticore and goblin, but it’s still something. Nico crouches beside Rin and gnaws at the leg. “This is— what, the fifth time I’ve found you here? Odd place to eat your meal.”

Rin tilts her head and stares at Nico long enough to make the smaller monster shudder, then sweeps her eyes around the clearing. She shrugs and stretches her mouth in that awful, horrifying grin again, but there’s an unsettling edge behind it. In the back of her mind, Nico wonders if she’ll be able to find that singing bird from earlier.

“Did Rin ever tell you about her human friend?”

Nico chomps down on the rabbit leg hard enough to snap right through the bone. “Isn’t that something important enough to mention at least once or twice? What the hell, Rin.”

“She’s buried right there.” Rin points a claw not far from where they’re eating.

Humans are… largely just food, to beasts like them. Even goblins would sometimes feed on their life energy, though Nico had never interacted with humans much in her lifetime, and she’s sure the feelings of dislike and disrespect are mutual from humans to monsters. Maybe Rin’s just messing with her. That’d make more sense than whatever she’s saying.

“Hey, come on.” Uneasy now, Nico stands up. “What’re you trying to do, tell a bad joke again? “

“Rin isn’t lying!” She stands as well, the quills on her shoulders bristling. Nico takes a step back and ducks to avoid being hit by Rin’s wings when she suddenly turns, quickly moving to where she had pointed. “I’ll prove it!”

This can’t be happening. Are all manticores this stupid?

“Prove _what?_ Don’t ignore me!” Nico produces a fistful of embers and hurls it at Rin, largely just to grab her attention, but the flames fizzle out on her back. Rin is digging through the snow and dirt with both hands, driven by a fierce determination Nico only sees on the rare occasion she can witness the manticore hunt, and it’s frankly a little terrifying. It’s a reminder of what Rin _is_ , that she’s not just an overly affectionate dolt who happens to be at the top of the food chain.

Rin abruptly stops digging. Nico cautiously extinguishes the flames she was building up in her palm and tries to look around her. She really doesn’t want to see a frozen human corpse that had been buried for who knows how long, at least longer than Nico’s stay in the forest (so, a year or so), but curiosity is a compelling force.

There’s nothing. “Her body is gone.” Rin looks at Nico with wide, confused eyes. “Kayo-chin is gone. Where’d she go?

Should she be relieved, or disappointed? Nico slowly exhales and puts a hand on Rin’s arm. “I don’t know. Let’s go back before your tail freezes and snaps off.”

—

Winter is quiet except when Rin gets too restless and starts stomping around inside. They somehow manage with whatever game Rin can catch, and Nico resorts to digging for rocks and minerals to eat even if the taste isn’t as nice as fresh, warm meat. She wonders if her siblings are doing fine on their own. It probably isn’t as cold where they chose to stay.

“Rin saw deer tracks out there! But no deer.” Rin frowns thoughtfully, crouched by the fireplace to warm her back.

—

One clear evening, Nico leaves Rin behind in the house while she goes out to forage for fungus in the snow. It’s a largely uneventful and blissfully quiet outing, and Nico manages to fill her basket with mushrooms before the sky completely darkens. There haven’t been many animals lately, and Rin keeps babbling about deer tracks.

There’s something standing close to the house. The silhouette of antlers stands out stark against white snow, the moon emerging from behind clouds, completely still. _Well, there’s that deer_ , Nico thinks to herself.

No, that’s wrong.

That thing is too damn tall to be a deer. It’s standing upright. It’s looking straight at Nico. Her heart stops and plummets at once, and her basket falls silently into the snow.

 _Wendigo_.

She screams, loud. Everything flies into chaos as Rin practically explodes through the door and the other monster emits an ethereal shriek of its own, out of surprise or rage Nico can’t tell. It jerks its gangly limbs unsteadily, as if unsure which direction to move, and Rin leaps up onto the rooftop with a single jump.

The manticore spreads her wings to their full wingspan, the tatters striking against the backdrop of the moonlit sky. She can’t fly, that idiot, is all Nico can think of when she’s too stunned by the appearance of the wendigo to do anything but sit uselessly on her ass. She can’t fly with her tattered wings. Rin furiously screeches down at the wendigo, the noise splitting through the air across the whole forest and sending Nico’s hackles bristling to their limit.

This isn’t a fight a goblin has any part in. Fuck. The wendigo is crouching now, its long, bony arms dragging against the ground. It raises its head to Rin and howls back, melancholy as it is petrifying.

A manticore is weakened by the cold, and hypothermic conditions are a wendigo’s natural environment. Nico can already see the outcome of the fight.

“ _Rin!”_ Nico shrieks, she’s not sure why, but she doesn’t want to see Rin get torn apart by the wendigo. Actually, the reason is loud and clear. Now just isn’t the time to admit it. “Get away from here!! Run!”

She knows Rin won’t, but it was worth a shot.

Rin screeches again and leaps from the roof, landing with a crash right in front of the wendigo. It stumbles back. Looks like it might be an equal stand-off now. Right, one thing Nico forgot to take into consideration was Rin’s ferocity and bullheadedness.

But she didn’t take into consideration the possibility of Rin suddenly grabbing the other monster into an _embrace_ , her frightening screeches now sobs and her tail no longer poised to strike. The snow muffles her cries, and Nico’s head is still loudly ringing, but she swears she can also hear the wendigo weeping as well.

—

She didn’t think there’d be a face more terrifying than Rin’s with her threatening fangs, but here they are.

“Rin was wondering where your body went, Kayo-chin!” Rin laughs, holding the wendigo’s gaunt hands in her own. “I wanted to show Nico your bones, cuz she wouldn’t believe me when I said I had a human friend, but you weren’t in the dirt anymore.”

Nico tries not to gag at the strong stench of rotting death and sets three stone mugs of tea on the table where they’re cramped around. Frankly, she didn’t want the wendigo to come inside, but then Rin had made those damn puppy-like eyes and she relented before she even realized what was going on.

“But anyway, this is even better proof!” She sticks her tongue out at Nico, then pauses. “I mean, but I guess Kayo-chin isn’t really a human anymore, so…”

“ _Yeah_ , I noticed that part.”

Hanayo makes a breathy rattling sound and shyly looks down. The entire lower half of her face has no skin, only mottled bone and some bits of flesh still stubbornly hanging on. Without lips, all she can do is make soft noises through her teeth. Nico almost feels bad that she can’t say what she wants to. It certainly seems like an inconvenience.

But then she looks at that permanent skeleton grin and feels more nervous than sympathetic. If she knew she’d someday end up with both a manticore _and_ wendigo in her tiny living room, Nico would’ve never moved to this forest.

“… I really, really missed you.” Rin nuzzles Hanayo’s rotted face. “Rin thought she’d never be happy again… but then Nico showed up!”

“And what a blessing that turned out to be,” Nico drawls. She glances and accidentally makes eye contact with Hanayo for a split second. Shit.

Her eyes are nothing but foggy dusk, but she still somehow manages to convey some sort of pleased expression. Must be the body language. Nico presses her lips into a thin line and folds her arms, determined to keep up her nonchalant facade. So what if she has two of the world’s most dangerous predators in her home? So what? Things happen. Whatever. It’s not like she really cared about living a peaceful life, oh no, this is totally fine too.

“I think Kayo-chin’s trying to say thank you, for taking care of Rin!” Rin bubbles.

Nico falter. “Y-yeah, no problem.” Big problem, actually, but it isn’t necessarily a bad problem either.

“ _Hhhuuuauuh,”_ Hanayo breathes, and Nico suppresses a fearful shudder riding up her spine.

“Kayo-chin’s as cute as ever!” Rin nuzzles Hanayo again. Nico has to question if Rin isn’t bothered by the stench or if she doesn’t even notice it in the glow of her happy reunion. “Rin knows you might not be so happy about ending up like this… but, I promise! I’ll always think you’re the cutest, no matter what!”

“I thought _I_ was the cutest,” Nico blurts out before she can stop herself. She immediately places her face in her hands and groans, easily giving in to Rin’s grab-and-hug.

“You too, you too!”

_“Hhhauuhh.”_

_—_

Winter passes without further incidents and Hanayo grows used to ducking low enough so that her antlers don’t catch on doorframes. Nico draws out plans for house expansions to better accommodate their new resident. It looks like this spring will be a busy one.

Hanayo never sleeps. Rin doesn’t seem to mind that her friend prefers to head out each night rather than resting in a pile with Rin and Nico, always looking on the bright side of things, and Nico is secretly grateful that she doesn’t have to deal with that stench of death when she’s trying to sleep. It’s just the little things in life that count.

Now and then, on sunny days, Nico catches the wendigo sadly staring at herself in the reflective surface of the nearby pond. She can only imagine the turmoil she must be bottling up, and the horror she must have felt when she emerged from the frozen earth as a wendigo. It’s not Nico’s place to comment, so she leaves her be, usually unsure what to say to her anyway. That’s something for Rin to handle.

Maybe things could be better, maybe things could be worse. Peaceful moments in the evenings when Rin is curled up in front of the fireplace and Hanayo is quietly weaving baskets, and when the day is done and the wind outside is gentle, remind Nico that it’s really not so bad.

And so life goes on as it does.

The snow begins to melt, and the wildflowers bloom with the arrival of spring.


	3. [ autumn ] Eli

Thanks for letting me in,” she says, holding her palms out towards the fireplace. “My name is Eli, by the way.”

Nico grunts something. She warily eyes the traveler, sweeping her beady eyes up and down the kneeling figure in quick observation. “Yeah, don’t mention it. And it’s Nico.”

It’s pitch black outside; the clouds obscure the moon and all the stars, and all that’s left is a dry wind rattling the forest down to the grass. Under normal circumstances, Nico wouldn’t even consider opening the door for some random traveler, but living for so long under the same roof as Rin and Hanayo had worn down her guard. The stench of wendigo is still overwhelmingly strong, even if Nico had somewhat gotten used to it and arranged flowers around to uselessly try to mask the smell. What kind of person would willingly seek shelter in a crammed cottage reeking of death?

Someone who’s clearly not human. Eli’s sitting almost right up against the fireplace, but it looks as though she’s hiding in a shadow. The light just won’t touch her. Nico can _see_ the darkness whispering off of her like steam. The unnatural blue tinge of her eyes wasn’t the giveaway; it’s the hazy darkness surrounding her.

“So you’re…” Nico uncomfortably shifts her weight between her legs, keeping her arms crossed.

“I know it’s strange, isn’t it?” Eli flashes a polite smile that’s somewhat obscured by the darkness. “I don’t think many people expect to receive visitors like me at this time.”

“Well, yeah, that’s one part of it.”

The closer she brings her hands to the fire, the more she seems to fade. Nico raises an eyebrow at the way the dark wisps crawl up her arm like they’re trying to get away from the flames. Actually, they probably _are_ trying to get away from the flames.

“Are you sure you should be sitting that close to the flames?” Nico asks as casually as she can, just in case Eli gets the wrong idea and thinks she cares, or something.

“Oh, no, fire is actually one of my greatest weaknesses.” Eli’s polite smile turns sheepish and she reluctantly shuffles back. The wispy darkness spills back to cover her arms and Nico can barely see her again. That looked like regular skin, when exposed by the heat of the fire.

No, now she has to ask. Nico unfolds her arms. “Then what the _hell_ are you doing?” She moves just a bit closer, eyeing the fireplace.

“Please don’t put out the fire!” Eli suddenly pleads. She stands up, easily towering over Nico’s tiny stature (her head nearly brushes against the ceiling), and for a moment Nico’s genuinely frightened of the smoky darkness and shadows spilling across the floor from Eli’s feet. Regardless of her plea, her own shadows creep across the logs in the fireplace and begin to snuff out the flames. Eli whips around, startled.

Nico growls, quickly snapping out of her brief stupor, and bravely pushes past Eli. A freezing chill runs up her arms and that unnatural fear nearly catches up to her a second time. But Nico is hardheaded, even for a goblin, and she manages to push the intruding thoughts away to focus on the task at hand. “Get out of the way!”

“Sorry—“ Eli helplessly steps back against the wall to let Nico take care of it.

The fire (the sole source of light in the room) is almost completely out, and Nico tries not to think about being stuck with a fully grown shade in complete darkness. Forget about living with a feisty manticore and hungry wendigo, being in the dark with a shade is one of the last things she wants. The faint watery glow of Eli’s eyes follows Nico as she falls to her knees in front of the rapidly dying hearth, hastily drawing up a ball of embers between her calloused palms.

“You have fire magic!” Eli sounds astonished.

Nico doesn’t respond, too busy concentrating on building up the fire in her hands and lightly tossing it into the pile of charred wood. She reaches for a couple more logs and tosses those in as well, making sure the fire grows steadily. Then she looks around to glare at the tall shadow awkwardly standing in the corner.

“You mind explaining yourself, already?”

The shade almost… cowers, but there’s not much space for her to cower. She’s too damn tall. “You’ll laugh if I tell you the reason.”

“Try me.”

“I’m not… particularly fond of the dark.”

“Okay, never mind, that’s hilarious.”

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

“No, I said _try me_.”

Nico reflexively draws up more fire in her hands when Eli’s form wavers, the wispy shadows expanding and filling the room like smoke. “Hey, hey, I was just kidding! Quit doing that!”

It’s a bit more than difficult to read her face when she’s just a shifting mass of darkness with two eerie pinpricks of lights for eyes, but Nico figures Eli might be pouting. Or scowling. But regardless of her expression, Eli shrinks back down until her humanoid form solidifies into view. Oh, yes, she’s pouting.

“Usually I’m fine outside, but it was cloudy tonight. I got nervous. That’s why I asked to stay here for the night.” Eli rubs the back of her neck. “I really don’t mean to be any trouble.”

“Like a moth to a flame, huh,” Nico mutters. She huffs and dismissively waves a hand, extinguishing her fire magic as well. “You probably smelled it already, but I’ve got some… _bigger_ things living here, too. But those two are out hunting; it’ll be a few days before they return.”

Now that Eli cleared Nico’s biggest questions, most of the unfamiliarity and tension is gone. She’s back to that vaguely shadowed appearance, uncannily human and uncannily inhuman. Indeed, like a moth to a flame, she draws closer to the revived fireplace, but this time she doesn’t get so close that her own aura isn’t burned away by the light.

Nico wonders when her tiny cottage became a hotel for terrifying monsters of the night.

“I guess you’ll be leaving in the morning?” Nico coughs. She shuffles to the adjoining kitchen and busies herself with preparing some tea. A guest is still a guest, even if it’s a creature that doesn’t need physical sustenance.

“Er, not quite. I’ll probably die if I go out into the sunlight, you know? It should be alright if it’s raining, though.”

In the back of her mind, Nico sort of hopes it’ll rain. But at the same time, Eli is polite enough (despite her subtle eccentricities) and it’s been oddly lonely while Rin and Hanayo are off hunting.

“Right. And you’ll probably die if you try to climb into that fireplace.” She returns with the tea and sits beside the shade on the floor, this time without any prompted fear creeping into her skin. “When was the last time you ate, anyway?”

“Only a day ago.” Eli neatly folds her legs beneath her. “In case you’re worried, I’m not interested in goblins.”

“That— that wasn’t my concern!” Nico angrily sputters. “And what’s wrong with goblins, huh?!”

“Nothing, nothing!” When she laughs, she almost sounds human. Then again, she could easily pass off as a well-adjusted human if it weren’t for that smoky darkness seeping from her form. Eli looks at Nico with genuine gratitude. “But really, Nico, thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had to stay out there by myself, tonight.”

“Hrgh, don’t make a big deal out of it. I’ve had worse guests.”

“So I could smell.”

The wind continues to softly howl outside. If she listens closely enough and uses some imagination, Nico thinks she can hear Hanayo’s mournful calls and Rin’s excited screeching echoing somewhere. But they must have gone far on their hunt by now. Autumn is drawing near its end; when winter comes, they'll be hunting even more frequently.

“Look…”

“Yes?”

“You probably don’t need the offer, but you can come and stay any time you want when the moon and stars aren’t out.” Nico pretends to be engrossed in observing the crackling flames. She can practically feel Eli’s warm smile lightly touching her, a strange thing coming from a creature made of coldness.

“Thank you, Nico.”

And she leaves it at that despite the obvious _I’ll be staying a little longer_ hidden in there, something Nico is glad for. They stay there until the fire slowly dies down to weak embers, and Nico pulls out a dusty oil lamp to burn beside Eli when she goes to sleep.


	4. [ summer ] the moon flowers

Eli misses the summer.

She misses the warmth of the sun on her skin and the last of the morning dew rolling between her toes, letting a gentle breeze wrap itself around her as she basks in the noon. She misses the daylight glistening off the surface of a pond and counting clouds against a vividly blue sky. Even sunburns weren’t so bad. The irony of her situation, a girl deathly afraid of the dark becoming a part of the darkness itself, isn’t lost on her.

It’s still not very funny after the sixth or seventh time Nico points it out.

Summer arrives and Hanayo quietly leaves one evening to get away from the heat. Eli sort of contemplates tagging along, but even she’s wary of keeping company alone with a wendigo. Well, it was either following Hanayo for weeks of walking to somewhere frozen in ice, or staying behind with Nico and Rin. Besides, Hanayo didn’t seem to be in the best of moods once the snow melted.

The third option of simply leaving by herself doesn’t really occur to Eli. She’d choose these strange monsters over dealing with the perpetual nightmare her life had become alone in a heartbeat.

“ELI!” Rin bellows once the sun goes down. From somewhere inside, Nico yells at her to shut up, but Rin just roars again and slams herself against the side of the stone tomb attached to the side of their tiny house. Eli stirs, momentarily loosing grip on her physical form. The familiar discomfort, as well as Rin’s uproar, yanks her to her senses. “ELIIIII! GOOD MORNING, ELI.”

The stones grumble at the second impact of manticore against wall and she winces. She pulls herself up to her feet and staggers to the door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The moment she cautiously leans outside, she’s greeted by a faceful of Rin tackling her with an overly-enthusiastic hug.

“—Oof.”

“Good morning!”

“It’s technically evening— could you get off me, Rin?”

“Oh, sorry!” Rin obliges and sits on her haunches, quivering. She’s unable to contain her excitement and tips over, flailing around on the dusty ground as if she forgot how to keep herself upright. “You said you’d show me tonight! You promised, remember!”

Eli sneezes and cautiously slides out of range of Rin’s thrashing tail. Nonetheless, she smiles. Nico may be easily annoyed by Rin’s energy, but Eli always found her to be endearing. Like a puppy. A big, poisonous puppy that could wipe out a whole village in a single night. It’s better not to think about that part.

The door’s still open. Outside, Eli notes that the sky is still a deep orange, bordering on a more bruise-like hue. She can hear the cicadas through the trees and Rin finally jumps up to her feet, automatically grabbing onto Eli’s arm.

“You’re awfully excited,” Eli laughs, patting Rin’s ears. “Have you been thinking about it all day?”

“Yep! I wish Kayo-chin could’ve been here with us, but…” She pushes her mouth to the side, exposing the tip of a fang. There’s no helping it. The flowers Eli had been talking about only bloom for a very brief time in the early summer, and Hanayo wouldn’t be able to stick around during that time. Rin squeezes Eli’s arm. “It’s fine! I’ll save some of the flowers for when she comes back!”

“Right, we’ll bring some extras back and I’ll show you how to press them. Do you think Nico would like one, too?”

Before Rin can answer Nico shouts back a response, still somewhere inside the house and out of view.

“ _Don’t bother!_ ”

Rin giggles and presses herself up against Eli’s side. She whispers, “Let’s bring one back for her anyway!”

Getting lost in the forest is all too easy, and Eli begins to feel a bit unnerved when Rin eventually detaches herself from her to go run off into the brush once they’ve been strolling off the path for a few minutes. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers despite the evening being pleasantly warm. Rin is noisy as always, crashing through foliage with her own special brand of recklessness, but then her noises fade off and Eli can’t see her anymore and she might as well be alone in the dark again with the strange sounds of unnatural nature around her.

No doubt Rin would come running back if Eli called for her, but she keeps her lips pressed together.

Above her, through the thick cover of branches and leaves, she can see the moon. Eli comes to a pause. It’s full.

And then— “Eli!”

She screams out of reflex and stumbles back, half her body seamlessly flowing into the shadows on the ground and the other half clinging to tangibility. Hot breath blows through her and she realizes it’s Rin, standing way too close and looking just as startled. There’s a mutilated rabbit in her hands. Eli sharply inhales and pulls the rest of herself back.

“Rin! Haven’t I told you before?!” No sneaking up on Eli. Especially at night. Which meant basically all the time, for her.

“M’sorry,” Rin mumbles, wings and ears sheepishly drooped. She nervously wrings the rabbit’s neck, nearly twisting its head right off, and holds it up. “Rin caught some food. Do you want a piece?”

“No. Thank you.” Eli leans her back against a tree and sighs, trying to look anywhere but at Rin’s guilty expression. Damn. She’s just so _small_ when she really looks her over, from her height to the tip of her barbed tail. Still dangerous, but small. Eli, on the other hand, feels smaller even though her head nearly brushes against the ceiling in Nico’s goblin-sized house.

The world is a dark, scary place when it comes down to it, full of shadows and things lurking in the shadows, Eli included. She wipes the vague irritation off her face and gently scratches Rin behind her ears; she perks up and offers the dead rabbit again.

“Keep it. I’m not hungry,” Eli says with a lopsided smile.

“Are we still gonna go see the flowers?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t break my promise.”

This time, Rin is careful to contain all her bursting excitement and quietly slips her hand into Eli’s.

For a moment a pang of nostalgia makes her hesitates, but Eli shakes it off and leads them deeper into the forest as Rin snacks on the rabbit. She did this once long ago, walking through the woods hand-in-hand with another girl, but those memories are trapped behind a hazy curtain that only becomes murkier as time passes.

It makes her wonder if Hanayo will be a bit less human when she returns once summer ends. She looks down at Rin, who’s still nibbling on the rabbit and spitting out clumps of fur, and squeezes her hand. Rin looks up and cheerfully smiles. She’s made a mess of herself and Eli makes a note to wipe her face off later. 

Someday this horribly carefree girl might understand.

Then they’ve come to a clearing where the moon can reach the grass. Rin yelps in excitement and releases Eli’s hand, tossing the remains of the rabbit carcass aside to freely bound on all fours across the field. The luminescent glow of the moon flowers is so bright they nearly illuminate all the surrounding trees to full visiblity. Eli takes her time following Rin until she’s standing in the middle of a dense bed of the flowers. She looks down at herself; she’s the only thing untouched by their light.

“Eli!!” Rin cries out, leaping and diving through the grasses and flowers. “They’re so pretty!! It’s incredible! Rincredible!” She flops onto her belly, crushing a Rin-shaped pattern into the flowers. 

“It’s like we’re on the moon…!”

She used to come here as frequently as possible even though they only bloomed with the full magnificence of their glow for a few nights each year. Eli makes her way over to Rin and crouches beside her, rubbing her belly and sending her into a fit of squirming giggles. That childish happiness is as bright as the flowers themselves, and Eli finally relaxes.

“And they smell like the sunlight, don’t they?”

“They sure do!” Rin paws at the air in front of Eli’s face and grabs her leg to affectionately gnaw on her. “Do you think that’s what the moon smells like?!”

“Mm, I think the moon would smell like the moon. Right?”

“Aww, now you’re just teasing Rin!”

“You know, they say that there’s a whole civilization of people on the moon.” Eli sits down and plucks a flower, twirling the stem between her fingers. “Their world is centuries beyond ours. But maybe they wonder what the earth smells like, too.”

“Mm, I think the earth would smell like the earth. Right?” Rin says in a startlingly accurate impression of Eli. Eli laughs and puts the flower up behind one of Rin’s ears.

She did this once long ago as well, sitting in a field of flowers with another girl. It was sunny.

“Oh! You said you’d show Rin how to make those flower circlets, too!”

Her reverie is snapped as quickly as it surfaced. Rin’s presence is too loud and demanding for any moment of inward contemplation, but maybe that’s a good thing. Eli hums and reaches around them to pluck more flowers. Rin watches with wide eyes as the stems are arranged and tied together; deftly, Eli crafts the first circlet and delicately places it upon Rin’s head. She can see the moon reflected in her wonder, and she can’t help but laugh and pat her again.

“Ahah! You look like a moon princess, Rin.” Eli fondly rubs her ears as the manticore’s wings flutter and her tail smacks against the ground in her joy.

“No way! Eli would be a better and prettier moon princess!”

But monsters can’t be anything but monsters.

Whatever’s left in her chest aches with that innocent fondness and Eli wishes she could get out of that sad darkness for good and join Rin in basking in the glow of the moon flowers. But, for now, this is good enough. Rin pulls up fistfuls of flowers and clumsily tries to copy what Eli had done. Patiently, she guides Rin’s hands.

“We’ll make one for Eli, one for Nico, one for Kayo-chin, maybe a few extras just in case…” Rin babbles on, happily struggling to form a neat circlet with the flowers. In the end, the circlet droops over one of Eli’s eyes and the other end covers an ear, but she looks so pleased that there’s no room for criticism. They spend the better part of the night like that, sitting and lying in that radiating field beneath the full moon until Rin has a sizeable pile of flower circlets of varying sizes and shapes and the sky is no longer pitch black.

They loop all the circlets onto Rin’s tail and reluctantly leave the field to start the winding trek back home. This time, Rin doesn’t run off to catch anything and remains close to Eli’s side, their hands intertwined.

The flowers they collected will wilt and lose their beauty in only a week, but when Eli tells Rin, she just grins and shrugs.

“What’s the problem? You just gotta enjoy them above and beyond, so that you don’t feel sad when they’re gone!”


	5. [ summer ] Nozomi

When Nico comes home one evening, she arrives to find that her house had become a spider’s nest. 

Naturally, she screams. Then she screams again when she spots Rin plastered against the door with cobwebs. Rin would probably wave to her but all her limbs are trapped, so she settles with yelling to be heard over Nico’s shrieking. 

“Heeeey, Nico!” Rin squirms, but even her monstrous strength isn’t enough to break the cocoon of webs she had been wrapped in. “Welcome back!” 

“WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HOUSE.”

Then to make things worse, _just to make things worse_ , the perpetrator emerges on top of the roof, a massive figure even larger and more terrifying than Hanayo. In the back of her mind, Nico wonders where Eli is and if she’s alright, but the thought is fleeting when faced with an arachnid on top of what used to be her house. 

Plus, Nico can’t really hear her thoughts over her own shrieking. 

“Oooh~ this is the little goblin you’ve been telling me about?” The arachnid taps a leg against Rin’s cheek. Rather than quivering in instinctual fear like any rational beast would, Rin giggles and nods. “What a cutie. Hey there! The name’s Nozomi~” 

Nico screams in a mash of terror, rage, and confusion; her face is turning an off-shade of blue. She plucks a stone from the ground and throws it with all her might. 

It plops to the ground only a few steps in front of her. “GET OFF MY HOUSE.”

“This is Rin’s new friend!” Rin proudly declares, not even concerned that there’s an arachnid lingering over her very vulnerable head or that Nico’s about to have an aneurysm. “I met Nozomi in the forest while I was looking for food! She asked if she could stay with Rin for a while, so I said yes… eheh, I hope that’s alright with you.” 

Nico stomps her feet, waving her arms in thrashing motions and practically frothing at the mouth. The sun’s almost down. Eli should be coming out around now, but her tomb had been covered with webs as well. Maybe she’s doing the smart thing and keeping herself hidden. 

Unlike Rin, that idiot, bringing a giant spider to their house. 

Nico’s temper tantrum goes unacknowledged and Nozomi scuttles off the house, arms loosely crossed and head tilted in a playfully curious gesture. Her legs keep  _tapping_ and it’s unnerving as all hell, which really isn’t helping the atmosphere.

“Ah, sorry about the mess— I was tryin’ to make things a little cozier for myself. I just got a little carried away~”

“ELIIIII!” Nico howls. “ELI, THERE’S A SPIDER.”

No response. Eli’s probably still waiting it out within the safety of her tomb. 

“Nozomi’s nice!” Rin pipes up. “She’s not gonna eat anyone!” 

“Really? Even though you’re so cute I could just _chew you up?”_ Nozomi pinches Rin’s cheeks and Nico clutches her chest, hunched over and wheezing. It’s not like she ever cared about Rin or anything, but… damn, who’s she kidding?

Plus, Hanayo would probably kill her if she returned and found the gnawed-on bones of her best friend. Or, even worse, she might _cry_ and Nico would have to deal with that. 

Right now, though, she has to deal with this lady who might eat her dumb pet manticore. 

“I’ll take care of you after I’m done with _her_.” Stop. Steady breaths, steady rhythm. She’s still pissed as all hell, but it’s just more fuel for the kindling and stomping her feet isn't going to do anything. Flames lick her callused palms and Nico hurls the embers one at a time, yelling as Rin yowls and Nozomi skitters out of the way in surprise. 

The cobwebs might be as strong as iron, but they’re still vulnerable to fire. Yes— they’re giving way to Nico’s fire magic, and Rin bursts free from her bindings and rolls a singed path across the grass, still caterwauling. Nozomi observes from a safe distance with a hand on one cheek and a somewhat concerned furrow in her brow.

In the end, Nico accidentally burns her own house down. Eli’s stone tomb is the only thing left standing.

Eli still refuses to come outside. 


	6. [ summer ] the spider

Nobody likes working in the heat. Progress is slow, if not completely nonexistent. Nico’s resolve to rebuild her cottage as something even bigger, better, and sturdier is a dream far out of her grubby reach only because Rin is useless underneath a ruthless summer sun and Nozomi is just plain unreliable when it comes to getting a proper day of work done. Eli has the excuse that she’ll burn to death if she’s exposed to daylight.  

The envisioned house isn’t supposed to be bigger, better, and sturdier to be more accommodating to more monsters. Nico just wants more space for herself. That’s the reason she’s sticking with, at least.

“Wasn’t that wall a little taller yesterday?” Eli surveys their “hard work” with a blatantly judgmental frown. The wall she’s referring to is the only wall they’d managed to construct so far, but now it seems to be missing chunks from the top.

“Rin’s fault,” Nico grunts without further explanation. She jerks her head towards where the manticore is, rolling around on the grass while Nozomi daintily steps over and around her in a weird sort of dance.

“Ah.”

“Oh, yeah, but it’s also Nozomi’s fault.” Nico rubs her nose with the back of her hand. “For distracting Rin in the first place. You know how hard it is to get that stupid cat to even listen to me? I don’t need someone pulling her attention away just when I manage to grab it.”

“Try bribery, next time,” Eli says with an unsure shrug.

“Sure, _sure_ , I’ll just whip up a string of dead squirrels like I’ve got all the time in the damn world to go hunting.”

Determined not to be contaminated by Nico’s foul mood, Eli drifts away for Rin and Nozomi at an angle rather than walking straight towards them, as if they wouldn’t notice. They notice. Nozomi cheerfully waves and Rin shakes bits of grass off of herself, bounding towards her with big, eager leaps on all fours.

“Eli! You wanna play with us?!”

She flinches at Rin’s enthusiastic booming. “Ah, sorry. I just woke up, so…”

“So I think she still needs a little time to energize.” Nozomi towers over her by a whole meter. She smiles at Eli without showing any teeth. “Did I get it right?”

“Something like that.” Eli shuffles uncomfortably and pats Rin’s head. “Nico is really mad at you. You should fix that wall before she sets something on fire again.”

Nico whips around. “ _I heard that!_ ”

“Go, go,” Nozomi gently shoos her off. Rin, outnumbered and threatened by Nico’s growing wrath, whines and slinks away with her tail dragging. The sky’s losing the last bits of its oranges and purples now. A cold evening breeze blows away the last of the sun’s lingering warmth and Eli shivers out of reflex.

“She’s also mad at _you_ ,” Eli tilts her head up at Nozomi without looking at her. “I don’t think you and Rin make a very productive team.”

“Ahaha, Nico’s all bark and no bite.”

“Even though she tried to set you on fire?”

“Oh, that was just a bad first impression.”

Eli scoffs in disbelief and turns the other way to watch Nico chase Rin around in circles. But as oddly reluctant as she is to admit it, Nozomi is right. She’s still unable to get a good read on the new addition to their home, though that’s possibly Eli’s own fault for avoiding socializing whenever she can help it, and it’s just plain unsettling. Nozomi is unsettling. Funny thought, for a creature unanimously regarded as more than unsettling by people. Yet if Nico hasn’t chased her away and Rin is practically enamored with her, there must be something Eli doesn’t see.

Or Nico and Rin are both terrible judges of character.

“Can I ask you something, Miss Eli?”

“Just—“ Eli coughs. “You don’t need to use formalities like that. But, yes.”

“Are you, by any chance, afraid of me?”

A tickling sensation creeps along the back of her neck and Eli freezes, the tips of her fingers trailing away into smoky shadows. Nozomi’s lightly scratching the skin there with the tip of one of her legs. The gesture is so _predatorial_ that Eli immediately steps away, the shadows now consuming her arms up to the elbows. She’s scowling, but Nozomi is still smiling with no teeth bared.

“How am I supposed to answer when you do something like _that?”_ Eli spits a bit too defensively. Her arms solidify. Nico is still chasing Rin around in circles off on the other side of the clearing.

“Oops~ just playing around,” Nozomi hums. “I really am kidding, though.”

Her wink says otherwise.

“Nozomi,” Eli starts.

She claps her hands together. “That’s the _third_ time you’ve addressed me by my name.”

Suddenly, Eli can understand why Nico ended the day in such a foul mood. But her annoyance is largely superficial and she’s still here, talking to Nozomi, so that must surely mean something even if Eli can’t be bothered to look for some other reason to it. Nozomi is a nuisance, but she supposes they’re all equal nuisances in Nico’s eyes. And that means they’re on equal grounds… as little sense as that makes.

“Nozomi,” Eli says again, this time more firmly. “There. Now that’s four times.”

That earns a hearty chuckle. “Nico never mentioned that you have a sense of humor.”

It wasn’t meant to be a joke, but Eli can see how it would be mistaken for one. She’s not even sure what it was supposed to be, come to think of it. The evening’s dimming and Nico is still yelling at Rin to stop fooling around. It’s like… being with a weird, weird family, and the thought is so _weird_ Eli inwardly grimaces and briefly wonders where Nozomi would even fit into that equation.

Actually.

“How long are you planning to stay? Just curious.”

“Well! I would love to meet Hanayo, so maybe through the winter? I don’t do very well in the cold, so I’d need somewhere warm to stay…”

Eli eyes the scattered pieces of materials yet to be constructed into Nico’s new house. Her tomb is the only standing structure. “My room is too small for you, I would say,” she says without thinking.

Nozomi puts a hand to her mouth in faux fluster. “Oh my~ you’re already inviting me to your place when we’ve just started to properly talk?”

“That’s not— no, I mean. I’m only _saying_ , because it’s… small, and it’s not very warm at all. What with it being made out of stone. So you can’t come in there,” Eli lamely finishes off. Amidst piles of wood and stones, Nico had finally run herself clean out of energy. She’s curled up with a dozing Rin, twitching in her sleep. Maybe she’s dreaming of chasing after her.  

“After we finish Nico’s house, maybe we can do some expansions to your room.” There’s that _wink_ again and Eli realizes she still has little idea what to make of this arachnid.

“Yeah… maybe.”

But she’ll have plenty of time to learn more.


	7. [ autumn ] feral instinct

The leaves will be falling off their branches soon and Rin imagines the _crunch crunch_ of hooves over the forest floor. Summer dragged its feet far too long but it gave them time to get work done. Nozomi has apparently declared herself to be a  _long-term resident_ like the others, though curiously enough, Nico only objects for about a day before giving in.

Then before the trees change color, Nico suddenly leaves on an undeclared personal trip of some sorts (according to Eli), likely to check in on her family before winter hits. When Rin asks Nozomi about it and why Nico didn’t even say goodbye, she only shrugs and says not to worry about it with a reassuring pat.

—

“Big day, big catch~” Rin sings in an off-tune lilt. Behind her, she drags a mountain lion by its hind legs. Its neck is grotesquely bulging from where Rin had struck it with her tail, its tongue flopping out swollen and purple.

“Ooh, it’s even bigger than yesterday’s,” Nozomi comments. She’s crouched on the rooftop, knitting something too misshapen to be a blanket. The yarn is messily draped everywhere. Nico might complain about the mess if she were around.

“Uh huh! It’s dinner! You want some?”

“I’ll pass.” Nozomi looks down at her knitting with a crooked smile. “Your appetite is still growing, hm?”

“Eli said that Rin is a growing manticore and it’s perfectly natural!” She puffs her chest out. “Soon, I’ll be catching even bigger things! Maybe even an ogre! But they probably don’t taste very good…”

Nozomi chuckles and sets down the needles. “Let me come along when you decide to hunt an ogre. I’d like to see how it goes.”

“Have _you_ ever caught one?” Rin asks with wide eyes, settling down cross-legged on the grass. She tears off one of the lion’s legs and takes a large bite out of it. For a moment Nozomi is silent, watching Rin make quick work of the leg, but then she’s smiling again.

“I do look like the type, don’t I? But no, I prefer smaller things. Rabbits, squirrels, birds. Much cuter than ogres, too.”

“Bleh! Squirrels don’t have enough meat.”

Once, Nozomi saw Rin bite a squirrel’s head clean off. Such things typically don’t bother her as she had done worse to her own prey, but the feeling was unsettling all the same. Her fangs had grown over the summer.

The mountain lion’s swollen, watery eyes roll and stare up at Nozomi. She realizes that Rin’s toxins had only paralyzed it, and she makes a note to tell Eli later with an unplaceable feeling of relief.

—

“It might be a problem for the prey population around here, too.” Eli runs a hand over her face. “We might have to move elsewhere.”

“We?”

“Ah— I mean,” she stammers. “Rin is still so young, of course, and she had nearly been caught by humans once. And you know she’d never willingly leave by herself alone.”

Nozomi taps her fingers on her hips and takes a sidelong glance to the messy pile that had once been the mountain lion. Rin is contentedly curled up beside it, sleepily gnawing on a bone and twitching in her half-conscious daze.

“She’s _growing_ , isn’t she?”

“I don’t feel good about this.” Eli hesitantly leans against her. “She’s only a child, Nozomi, she’s only a child. What do we do with her?”

Nozomi pauses. She carefully lays a hand on Eli’s shoulder, grimly smiling. “Shall we ask Nico for advice?”

“Soon, I hope.”

—

Rin is idle with her time as she eagerly waits for Hanayo’s return. When she isn’t pestering Nozomi with questions about if wendigo are able to find their way home, if the house will be big enough for all of them, when will Nico be back, she wanders farther and farther away until she’s hunting around the base of the mountain.

It somewhat eases Eli’s concerns as much as it raises more worries. Rin triumphantly marches up one evening with a large bear hoisted over her shoulders, and Nozomi quickly congratulates her while Eli slips away back into her tomb.

“Is Eli afraid of bears?” Rin asks. She’s perched on top of the animal, flexing her wings and kneading her claws into its back. For now, she seems more interested in using it like a large bed than eating it.

Nozomi’s not quite sure how to tell the truth, so she lies. “Mmhm. Eli’s actually afraid of quite a lot of things, ya know?”

“I’ll save some meat for her! I bet if she sees how tasty bears are, she won’t be afraid anymore!”

“That’s very generous of you, Rin.”

“Oh! And I’ll save some for Nico too, so she’ll have good stuff to eat when she comes back! Then I should save some for Kayo-chin too while I’m at it, and then I’ll put some aside for snacks too, and, um… hmmm…”

As she’s stuck pondering over the calculations of how much bear meat she could put aside, Rin turns circles and sits neatly on her haunches, head tilted in deep concentration. Nozomi ungracefully snorts at how silly she looks.

“Riiiiin~ that bear’s gonna get cold before you’re done thinkin’.”

“Huh? Oh, it’s okay! Rin only paralyzed it, so it’s not dead yet!”

This time, Nozomi manages to laugh and reaches over to ruffle Rin’s hair. She giggles and rubs up against Nozomi like an affectionate cat, stepping off of the bear to properly wrap herself around Nozomi’s waist.

Unseen in the shadows cast by the house, Eli digs her fingers into her arms and shudders.

—

“We have to tell her.”

“Eli, no—“

“Are we just going to ignore the whole thing, then?! Brush it all under the rug?!”

“Rin is a sensitive child…”

“She’s _growing_ , Nozomi! You said so yourself! We can’t hide it anymore!”

“Eli? Nozomi?”

Both of them whip around with startled panic in their eyes, Eli on the verge of melting into the shadows to hide and Nozomi tense and crouched. Rin looks between them both, ears flattened low. She rubs her mouth with the back of her hand and quivers.

“R-Rin.” Eli is the first to break the tense silence. “I thought you were asleep.”

“It’s a full moon tomorrow, so I thought—“ Rin hiccups and rubs at her mouth again. “I thought, maybe you could take me to see the moon flowers again. I wanted to ask you…”

Ah. She’d nearly forgotten about the moon flowers. Eli deflates with a sudden wave of guilt and shame washing over her like cold wind. Hurriedly, she steps towards Rin and pets her head like she always does. “Y-yes, of course. We’ll bring Nozomi, too.”

“What about Nico?” Rin frowns.

“Rin,” Nozomi softly says. “Nico is visiting her family.”

“Then why are her boots still by the fireplace?”

Nozomi feels all of her guts plummeting at once, and Eli’s smile painfully freezes like ice. How had they forgotten such a mundane detail? Maybe they had simply assumed, somewhere in the back of their panicked minds, that Rin wouldn’t even notice, but it’s too late to backtrack everything.

“Nico wouldn’t come with us to see the flowers, last time, but I thought… maybe this time, she wouldn’t say no, and Rin was even hoping that Hanayo would come back in time so we could all go together…”

“Stop, _listen_ ,” Eli chokes, gripping Rin’s upper arms and kneeling to look up at her. “Nico will be back, okay? I promise, I swear on my _life_ that she’ll be back.”

But Rin isn’t crying, nor is she on the verge of tears. Her pupils are heavily dilated and she’s breathing so quietly, too quietly, and Nozomi realizes something is wrong. She straightens up to her full height and looms over them both with a terrifying shadow, all her eyes opening at once and her mandibles pushing out from her gums.

Neither of them know what to do, so it’s best to be prepared.

“Rin, dear, are you listening to us?” But in spite of her posturing, Nozomi still sounds as calm as she always is. She brushes Eli aside and leans over, gently tilting Rin’s face up to look down into her eyes. “It’s alright, Rin, Nico will be back. We both promise she’ll be back, so there’s nothing to worry about. Okay?”

Nozomi’s a far better liar than Eli will ever be. Rin makes a small, whimpering sound from the back of her throat, pupils still dilated. Her nostrils violently flare.

“Oh, gods,” Eli puts a hand over her mouth. “I think she’s remembering.”

—

The moon flowers didn’t bloom last month, much to Rin’s disappointment. Eli had promised that they would bloom once more before the summer ended.

—

“Rin, _stop!_ ” Nozomi shouts, composure broken. Rin had torn her face away from Nozomi’s grip and dropped down to the ground on all fours, wings tightly folded against her back. She scrabbles away too fast for either of them to grab her, weaving around the furniture and racing for the door. Her tail makes a horrible scraping sound when the barbed end drags over stone.

“I didn’t lock the door!” Eli breathlessly gasps as she sinks into the closest shadow. “Nozomi, you have to—“

“I know!” She snarls back, all her legs a blur as she vanishes after Rin.

The entrance to Eli’s tomb is slightly ajar, leading into an unsettling darkness. The stars are beginning to show themselves patch by patch, and Rin moves low through the grass with a dry slither, following a scent she had overlooked these past couple weeks. Her ears twitch. She can hear Nozomi coming after her.

“You can’t-!” Eli suddenly materializes directly in front of the door, legs braced and arms extended, ready to catch Rin. But Rin simply knocks her aside and squeezes herself between the crack and into that darkness.

A rough cough shatters through all of Rin’s tightened senses.

She stops in her tracks. Her eyes quickly adjust to the inky blackness.

“… What the _hell_ are you doing in here,” Nico rasps from the back of the small room, teeth fully bared. She looks so small, so small sitting there, legs splayed and sweat plastering her hair to her forehead.

She looks so _vulnerable._

“Nico…?” Rin fights off the memories frothing to the surface of her mind, numbness spreading to the tips of her fingers. She can smell it now, the putrid odor of flesh bloated by her own toxins. 

“ _Get out!”_ Nico suddenly screams. She clenches her teeth and presses a hand to her side; Rin’s gaze automatically follows and she finally sees the bandages wrapped around her, and the ugly marks scarring her bare skin.

Eli rises from the ground between them, expression pained. Behind Rin, Nozomi is tense, a coiled spring ready to act.

“I’m sorry, Nico,” Eli says without looking away from Rin. “We tried to keep her away.”

“Well you didn’t do a very good job, did you?!”

“N-Nico? What happened to you?” Rin asks in a tiny, tiny voice, even though she knows she already has the answer.

“ _Get out!!_ ”

“Rin.” Nozomi’s mandibles are still out and she lowers herself to Rin’s level from behind, cautiously and silently. Her mouth is wide open, and she whispers. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She bites down onto nothing. Rin had swerved away and beneath Nozomi’s legs, stumbling towards the door and falling onto the grass outside, the echoes of Nico’s furious screams ringing in her head. She can dimly hear Eli’s yells as well, and then Nozomi’s legs tapping against the stone as she turns around. Everything’s coming back to her all at once— she _remembers_.

—

Eli emerges outside with Nozomi just in time to see Rin sprinting towards the edge of the forest on all fours. They stand there, unsure what to do, maybe unable to do anything, and then Eli sharply inhales  when Rin unfurls her wings. The tatters had finally healed enough that the biggest holes had closed over. Rin clumsily takes off into the sky before she reaches the trees, flapping her wings hard as she recollects the memory of how to fly.

Her silhouette is all but invisible against the night sky. Not even the stars or moon would shine on her.

“… Now what?!” Eli falls to her knees, slamming a fist against the ground.

“ _Is she gone?”_ Nico’s hoarse voice calls from within Eli’s tomb.

Nozomi throws a sharp look behind her, but it quickly falls back to weariness and worry.

“She’ll be back, someday.”

—

It was an act of pure, feral instinct, Eli had said. Rin didn’t know and couldn’t have known about what she had done to Nico after three consecutive days of fruitless hunts, during that month when the moon flowers didn’t bloom.

Luckily, goblins are very tough to kill and Nozomi and Eli were there to stop it before she went too far. Rin didn’t know, couldn’t know, and they decided to keep it a secret for the sake of the balance they had managed to bring to their home. Nozomi and Eli didn’t have the chance to tell her before she ran away, but it had been Nico’s idea to keep the truth from Rin, and Nico had never suggested forcing Rin to leave.

The balance had become far too delicate; its collapse was inevitable. It’s only in a manticore’s nature to be a solitary predator, and Rin had never been taught to _be_ a manticore.

—

Nico stares blankly into the fireplace, carefully listening to the wind picking up outside. Nozomi had brought her knitting inside once the first signs of winter began to creep up on them, and for once, Nico doesn’t complain about the mess of yarns and needles. 

They jump when Eli suddenly slams her palm against the wall, breathless and her hair lightly dusted with powder snow. 

“It’s Hanayo. Hanayo’s finally back.”

Nico softly groans and lowers her face into her hands.

“Shit.”


	8. [ winter ] family

On the outskirts of the third village they pass around, Eli veers off the path to a small house just on the fringe of the town, more hidden by the dark of the surrounding woods than bathed in the light of the torches on the wall. That’s too dangerously close, but Eli seems determined to stop there. She doesn’t say anything about her intents. At this point they’re both exhausted and dawn won’t arrive for some hours.

“We’ll go a bit farther then stop for the day,” Eli says, her tiredness oozing in wisps. “I’d just like to check on something, first.”

Nico only grunts and impatiently taps a foot. Rin could be on the other side of the continent by now. Knowing her recklessness, she might even try to fly across the sea, and Nico _knows_ she’ll drown if she tries.

But they’ve been searching for weeks with nothing to show for it. Nozomi’s spiders haven’t reported anything from her search with Hanayo, either.

“You know this place?”

“Yes. I do.”

She vaguely remembers Eli once offhandedly mentioning that she used to be a human, but it never came up more than a couple times. The dots are easy to connect; Nico tries to soften the tension in her shoulders and looks up at Eli a little sympathetically.

“I, uh, miss my family too. I get it.”

Eli exhales. From where they linger behind a line of trees, they can see through one of the windows. “I’m not sure you would. Our situations are… different.”

“Family is family, isn’t it?”

“Of course, but.”

“You’re _so_ sentimental, it’s kinda gross.”

Inside the house is an old woman, knobby hands moving over a worn throw blanket as she slowly rocks back and forth in her chair. There’s a younger woman with soft blonde hair kneeling beside her too, mouth moving to the shape of cheerful words, and the silhouettes of two men moving behind one of the curtains. A dog barks. Nico can hear a child laugh, too, and something inside her aches.

Eli’s only half distinguishable from the shadows, like she’s consciously trying to fade away. Nico can’t see her face; it’s just gone.

“The elderly woman would be my younger sister’s granddaughter,” Eli finally says, her voice disembodied and all around them. “My great-niece.”

Nico isn’t sure what to say so she just tries to pat Eli’s arm again, aimlessly guessing where she’s still corporeal.

“… That’s rough.”

“Thanks, Nico.”

They slowly back away when the blonde woman moves up to close the curtains. And that’s that; they make their way back into the woods, heading away from that house and the village and off to wherever else their search might go.

“Hey, if you want…” Nico coughs. “I’ll take you to meet my family. After we find Rin.”

Eli doesn’t say anything, nor does she solidify her form from the surrounding darkness, but Nico thinks she might be smiling.


	9. [ spring ] Honoka

Contrary to the long-lived legends, the phoenix is not entirely immortal. It can be killed by three methods: directly strike its heart with pure iron, pluck every last feather from its wings, or submerge its burning body in icy water during a resurrection cycle. 

But anyone would be so lucky to test any of these methods; phoenixes are extremely few in number, so few that most have never encountered another member of its own species in their long, long lifespans.

Their brand of immortality is typically associated with tempered wisdom and aged grace. These magnificent creatures are heralded as symbols of prosperity and timeless history by many humans, unaware of the true loneliness of the phoenix’s existence.

—

Umi awakens one hazy morning to find a fire blazing on the bank of her pond. Its heat is so intense that the water had retreated from the shoreline and the mud is dried up around it, all the bugs and grasses that used to be there completely incinerated.

With a long, exasperated sigh, Umi drags herself out of the water and sits at a safe distance to wait. The fire merrily crackles as the sun makes its way over the horizon, peeking through the dense thickets and trees and greeted by the distant screech of a cockatrice. Mornings used to be so quiet and uneventful.

The fire finally begins to die down. Her skin is uncomfortably dry by this point, and she has spots in her vision from where she had stared at the intense flames too long. She can barely trace the silhouette rising from the dried up mud and ashes.

“Ahhhhhh! That was a refreshing one!” Honoka crows, stretching and twisting and bending her limbs like a morning exercise. Her sooty face lights up when she spots Umi. “You were waiting for me!”

“As always.” Umi nods with trimmed patience. “Again, Honoka?”

“Ahaha… I might’ve wandered too close to a hunting party. They probably thought I was a roc.”

“And?”

“I took an arrow through my chest!” Honoka thumps a fist above her right breast as if she should be carrying a badge of honor there. “It really, reaaally hurt! Ahh, you really should’ve seen this one.”

The tight twist in her gut makes Umi want to grit her teeth and yell, and scold Honoka until the phoenix gets sick of it and flies away, but she knows it would ultimately be for nothing just like the dozens of other times she had tried to discipline her. Maybe it’s just in Umi’s nature to be a worrywart. That sounds like something Honoka would say.

“So, anyway, I flew over here before I died,” Honoka says matter-of-factly, picking at her wings with her forefinger and thumb. “It’s been a while since I visited, and I knoooow you like to worry a bunch about me, Umi…”

And why should she worry? It’s silly to worry about the well-being of an immortal. Umi stands, her gait somehow unsteady and graceful at the same time. Honoka’s vibrancy is absolutely jarring against the dull bleakness of the swamp. The air is stifling and humid enough as it is, but her presence makes it feel like a blooming desert. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and her brimming confidence brings a strange reassurance to Umi’s dull, bleak life of waiting for hapless travelers to wander a bit too close to the water. Nothing ever happens, except when Honoka is around.

Maybe Umi wishes that she, too, could be that uninhibited and free and leave this ugly swamp.

“Honoka,” Umi slowly enunciates, deciding to go for it anyway. “You know I’ve told you many times about being so careless.”

“Aww, you’re gonna lecture me again! I knew it!”

“It doesn’t _matter_ if you come back each time, because!”

“Umi! Your skin’s looking awfully dry!”

“Despite your ability, you…!” Umi squeezes a fist and steps a bit closer to Honoka. “You just make me _worry_ all the time, understand?”

Honoka will never die, and therefore she will never be careful with herself. Maybe she’ll never bother trying to learn, either. She slightly bows her head and nods, though her eyes are shut and she has a not-so-serious frown wrinkling her chin. “Got it. I got it.”

“Do you really?!”

“Hey, relax a little. You look so scary when you’re angry, Umi.” Honoka weakly smiles and rests a warm hand on Umi’s shoulder. “That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed since I met you.”

“You haven’t changed at all, either.” Defeated yet again, Umi’s shoulders sag and she looks down at that hand, deciding that it’s not worth the effort of shrugging off. Besides, it’s _warm_.

“Haha! Well, you know me. Never changing.”

Never changing. She’ll never stop dying and dying and dying and she’ll never learn or care, because a phoenix doesn’t have to care about silly things like that.

Her hand slides off and Umi stares at Honoka for a long, contemplative moment before turning to slink back into the water. But then that hand is back where it just was, grabbing Umi before she melts away, the heat of Honoka’s fire tickling her back. Sometimes the way things are is so frustrating that Umi almost wonders why they’re even friends. Every time, Honoka says _something_ that reminds her again.

“Don’t leave like _that_ ,” Honoka bites her lip in a rare moment of serious thought. “… I’ll try to be more careful next time. For you, Umi. You’re kind of a buzzkill when you worry so much.”

“If I don’t worry, then who will?”

No one, of course, because there’s no point in it.

Honoka’s eyes sparkle and she wipes at her nose with the back of her hand. Before Umi can go back to slinking into the water, Honoka has her wrapped in a tight, and very very warm hug, her feathers settling around them in flashes of burning gold. She’s getting mud all over, but she obviously doesn’t care about that. Unable to compromise with herself, Umi settles with awkwardly patting Honoka’s arms. She smells like smoke, as always. 

“Anyway, I’m off to visit Maki!” Honoka chirps, releasing her hold just as quickly as she initiated it and lightly jumping up into the air. Umi winces when small embers rain down around her, but thankfully nothing ignites. 

“Please remember what you just told me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Honoka solemnly says, even adding a little salute. If it were anyone else it would seem like a mocking gesture, but Umi can sense the sincerity in it. 

“’Til we meet again, Honoka.”

Which could be anywhere between a day and several weeks, frankly. Her wings brush against branches as she nears the treetops but Honoka suddenly pauses, flapping hard with a bit of urgency.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you! A birdy told me that Maki was attacked by a manticore not too long ago.”

“What?” Umi lifts her head, alarmed. “Those don’t belong in the forest. Is Maki alright?”

“Of course, duh!” Light as smoke, she laughs. The air around her crackles from the heat of her mirth and Honoka rolls her shoulders, smiling easily down at Umi. “Maki can take care of herself, silly. I just wanna see the aftermath.”

“The aftermath…?”

“Oh, yeah! She cut off the manticore’s tail. Like— _chop!_ ” And with that, Honoka twirls in the air and rises, leaving a fleeting trail of sparks and flame. “See you later, Umi!”


	10. [ summer ] Maki

Things begin to seem bleak after a while. Not when the snow melts, because hope is still fresh in their hearts, not when the flowers bloom, because they can’t acknowledge the worst case scenario, but when Hanayo’s arm falls off at the shoulder they realize it’s _summer_ and they’re far from home and who-knows-how-far from Rin. They’ve got nothing to show for their efforts.

Hanayo’s body is falling apart but even that doesn’t seem to matter much to her. She’s a walking, groaning stack of bones and skin and hair held together by spider threads, still mournfully caterwauling at night in case Rin hears. But there never are any responses, only the fearful scattering of animals and other things that hide in the dirt. All Nozomi can do is keep them moving in case. Just in case. That perpetual _just in case_ that never happens and when Hanayo’s other arm falls off as they’re climbing along the foot of a mountain, Nozomi contemplates going home.

But, Hanayo had once articulated, it isn’t home when Rin isn’t there.

The windy mountains slope down into a forest not too unlike the one where they had come from. It’s by a bubbling creek where a spider comes whispering in Nozomi’s ear, and for the first time in weeks, things don’t seem so bleak after all.

“Spread the word to Nico and Eli, dear,” Nozomi says to the long-legged spider. It obligingly skitters away and Hanayo tilts her head. Her face is nearly gone at this point. Nozomi smiles wide, and gently cradles her skeletal jaw in one hand.

“She’s close.”

Hanayo’s bones rattle in anticipation.

—

“Rin.” Maki, ever the impatient one, kicks dirt up when she catches Rin napping in a patch of sunlight. It gets in her hair and all over her clothes, but Rin does nothing but roll over and curl up.

“ _Rin_.”

She could kill her. It’d be easy. A manticore without its venom is just about a regular mountain lion, if mountain lions also had wings, but Rin’s wings are too tattered to catch any wind. What use is she, then? None at all, apparently. Completely useless. She can’t even go fetch the things Maki told her to get.

“Rin!” This time, instead of kicking dirt, Maki kicks her in the side.

It does the trick; Rin startles and jolts, scrabbling at the dirt and vigorously shaking her head. Her ears press flat against her head, a telltale sign of her guilt. “A-ah, Maki! I was just— napping!”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Maki rolls her eyes. “I thought I told you to go gather things for me.”

“Ummm. I’m nocturnal?”

Maki’s fingers curl around air like she’s handling something particularly unpleasant. Rin’s still lying on the ground, pouting up at her as if she expects something like that to actually work. “At least put some effort into your excuses!”

“Maybe it’s seasonal!” It isn’t. Rin maintains her pout as she stands, stretching those useless wings to shake the dirt off. “I was gonna get to it eventually!”

“ _Eventually_ is a terrible work ethic.”

“But it’s still ‘eventually’!”

Arguing with Rin’s special brand of logic is pointless. Maki was quick to learn that lesson when they met back when the snow was melting, when she came across her bleeding in the bushes. Rin had attacked, of course. But a wounded beast would only have two options when confronted, and this one was clearly too hungry to run or recognize a fight she couldn’t win. Yet even after Maki gained the upper hand and lopped off Rin’s tail with the knife she used to cut plants, Rin didn’t leave.

Assuming Rin was dead was her first mistake. The second was dressing her wounds and trickling water down her parched throat, when Maki found her still feebly twitching on the ground the next day. But what can Maki say? She’s weak to her own bouts of pity.

She just doesn’t like to see things die, is all.

“Hurry up. The last of the mandrakes will be dying off soon,” Maki says. She turns and looks up at what bits of sky are visible through the trees. Behind her, Rin loudly yawns and smacks her lips.

“Uh huh. Two basketfuls, right? What’re you makin’ this time?”

“Just medicine to sell at the village.”

Maki reflexively freezes up when she feels Rin stepping too close to her, leathery wings stretching and circling around them. She _knows_ by now that Rin wouldn’t hurt her, but it’s a reflex nonetheless.

“I wanna come with you. It’s boring when you’re not around.”

“Don’t be stupid, you know I’d lose all credibility if I brought the likes of you around.” Humans trust unicorns. They practically worship Maki. If they saw Rin, on the other hand… “Besides, you know I’ll only be gone for a day.”

This time, she nearly jolts when Rin hesitantly wraps her arms around her.

“H-hey, you’re supposed to be harvesting mandrakes for me.”

“I know, I know.”

It’s just… awkward. She sometimes wants to ask why Rin had been bleeding in the bushes that day they met when the snow was melting, but somehow it never came up after she nursed her back to health. It’s like she had simply fallen out of the sky. Maybe she did. Where did she come from? Who hurt her? What happened? The questions burn in the back of her throat, but die on the tip of her tongue.

Sometimes she gets the impression that Rin just doesn’t want to talk about it.

Then Rin finally lets go of Maki and wordlessly goes to fetch the baskets. Maki lets out breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, unsettled by Rin’s odd moment of sentimentality. Awkward, indeed. She’d like to ask her _someday_ , but that _someday_ implies that Rin would be staying here for some time to come.

But she wouldn’t, would she?

It isn’t long before the air is filled with the horrible shrieking of mandrake roots and the panicking of birds fleeing by flocks, and Maki retreats back into her burrow to avoid the brunt of the noise. Her headaches are bad enough as is. At least she has someone to do the dirtier bits of work for her now.

—

Rin’s severed tail hangs from the dirt ceiling amongst dangling tree roots and garlands of herbs like a piece of decoration, a constant reminder to Rin that Maki is no pushover and a reminder to Maki that Rin is more or less harmless now, teeth and claws aside. She hates vegetables, and hates fish even more, but Maki doesn’t like hunting and for some odd reason, Rin prefers forcing the bitter soups down her throat than going out to look for her own food. Truly harmless, indeed.

But she’s a carnivore, and an herbivore’s diet is slowly making her weaker and weaker until even Maki has to say something about it. No wonder she’s been sleeping so often. Rin hasn’t been lazy, she’s just been fatigued.

“Go hunt, for gods’ sake. I won’t have you dying inside my home. I don’t mind as long as you don’t bring leftovers back here.”

Rin fervently shakes her head. “I can’t hunt.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“I- I don’t wanna.”

And she looks so uncharacteristically afraid for some reason, who even knows why, that Maki just sighs and makes a half-biting comment about how useless Rin is. The next time she journeys down to the humans’ village, she uses some of her own saved money to buy pieces of boar meat for Rin.

On the way back, she imagines she smells something like decay along the warm forest path, but can’t find any dead animals when she investigates.

—

The smell doesn’t go away. In fact, it only gets stronger the closer she gets to her burrow, and Maki’s quick trot breaks out into a run when she finds traces of frost along the trees that don’t belong in this summer heat. _Why here_? Why now? Panic grips her and Maki slips on leaves that had been coated by melting ice, nearly giving herself away with a shriek when she spots the rotting _thing_ circling her tree, searching for the entrance to her burrow.

Rin. She’s probably inside sleeping, completely unaware of the terror right outside. Maki’s no predator, her kind don’t fight, her instincts all tell her to flee and find refuge in the village where the humans will surely protect her with their guns and steel.

But Rin’s useless as she is and can’t defend herself. She can’t just leave her there at the wendigo’s mercy without a clear conscience.

Something sharp taps her shoulder, and a woman’s voice greets her from behind.

“ _Hello, there_.”

Spiders crawl up her legs. This time, Maki does scream.

—

If Hanayo still had a working heart, it would’ve fallen from her chest with how quickly it would have been beating away. The scream from the treelines doesn’t deter her, because Nozomi can take care of whatever it is, and Rin’s scent is so _strong_ that it’s all she can focus on.

There. A bit of loose dirt. She plunges one hand in and scoops, and the dirt collapses inward with a cloud of dust. The hollow beneath the tree is large enough for a family of bears to stand in, but there are no bears, only an assortment of odd wooden furniture, and the strong odor of herbs, and…

A manticore’s tail hanging from the ceiling.

She reaches out to it with a trembling claw, brushing over the dried shell. It’s Rin’s. It’s unmistakeably Rin’s and the rest of Rin is nowhere to be found. Whoever was screaming outside is still screaming, and it clicks into one piece with a dreadful conclusion.

Hanayo pulls the tail from the ceiling and ducks back outside, the frost around her feet spreading.

—

“No, no, it’s alright! Stop screaming! We’re not here to hurt you, we just want our friend back—“

“ _GET THESE SPIDERS OFF ME!!”_

“Well now, I can’t stop children from being children.”

 _“THEY’RE SPIDERS!!_ ”

“They’re _children_.”

“ _SPIDERS!!!”_

_—_

As if things couldn’t get any worse after Maki fell over with the spiders all over her and the arachnid cheerfully trying to explain how curious children naturally are, the air suddenly gets a noticeable chill. On the bright side, the spiders are driven away by the abrupt cold. On the downside, the wendigo is now wrapping one skeletal hand around her wrist and lifting her up clear off the ground, all teeth bared.

Maki wheezes, and the only thought going through her mind is of the package of boar meat spilled across the dirt. For gods’ sake.

—

But she was never really in any real danger, because Hanayo’s anger is never, ever potent enough to drive her to kill or even fight and Nozomi wouldn’t allow it anyway. In fact, it was simply a matter of miscommunication; Hanayo, unable to speak coherently, had her dreaded desperation mistaken as murderous intent, and Maki, already riled up by Nozomi’s spiders (“children”), was too busy screaming and flailing to listen to Nozomi’s attempts to explain themselves.

But one typically doesn’t respond with rational calmness when a wendigo and arachnid show up at the doorstep, so.

—

“Kayo-chin?”

Everything stops at once, even the spiders, except for Maki’s shrieking. Hanayo slowly turns around, eye sockets brimming with tears. Or it could be pus, either or. Nozomi’s hands fly to her mouth and her eyes _do_ fill with tears, all eight of her legs trembling with disbelief.

There, only a few meters away, stands Rin, gaunt and scruffy but very much alive.

Maki finally stops screaming, and instead grunts when she’s carelessly dropped. Hanayo carefully treads closer to Rin as if the ground is made of thin ice, hands extended and sad noises coming from her throat.

The words could come, but they can’t. So instead, Rin rushes to close the rest of the distance between them and throws herself into Hanayo’s arms, wailing.

“K-Kayo-chiiin…! I’m s-s-sorryyyy—“

Gods, the noise is nearly as deafening as the mandrake cries.

—

Everything does eventually get sorted out, sort of, and Nozomi does give Maki a somewhat unfriendly frown when she reluctantly confesses that she was the one who cut off Rin’s tail and strung it up like a piece of decoration. But Rin is too busy crying and stuffing her face with the boar meat to really comment on that part, so it slides for now.

They finally found Rin, and that’s all that matters.

“I- I can’t go back. Because Nico…”

“Nico already forgave you,” Nozomi sadly smiles and pets Rin’s head. Rin dribbles and sobs again, pressing herself up against her. “She misses you a lot, too. We all went looking for you. Ever since Hanayo came back, we’ve been looking.”

Rin swallows, the semblance of her usual energy already trickling back with each bite of meat. She hugs Nozomi, then hugs Hanayo, then looks to Maki with round, wet eyes. “A-a-and Maki saved my life!!”

“It wasn’t a big deal…” she mumbles, leaning back against a tree a bit away from the others. “I just didn’t want you to die right outside my home. It would’ve been a pain.”

Nozomi gives her an odd look, but says nothing.

“ _Hhhggkhhaarrgh_.”

“I thought about you too every single day!!”

They’re making a _mess_ with all that hugging. Hanayo looks like she’s going to fall apart with how tightly Rin’s holding onto her.

“ _Hhgahgh rrkkah?”_ Hanayo looks at the tail, laid across Nozomi’s back.

“Umm, maybe we can just tie it back on…”

“Or Maki can reattach it with her… unicorn magic?” Nozomi’s lips slowly spread into a smile, eyes narrowed. “It shouldn’t be hard at all for a beast with such magical strength.”

“I- It’s not that simple!” Maki, flustered, tugs at her hair. “There’s a lot of ingredients to be gathered and prep to be done, a-and the tail is dried already, and—“

“And you’re not a unicorn, are you?”

Rin’s endless stream of tears stops. Hanayo looks up as well, head tilted. Ah. Well, their staring is only making her even more nervous, and Maki contemplates just making a run for it. But that’d be silly and useless, of course.

“What do _you_ know? Leave me alone.” She scowls, looking away. Nozomi approaches with hands outstretched threateningly, reaching for which parts of her, Maki isn’t sure, but she doesn’t think she wants to find out. She quickly ducks away from Nozomi and hurriedly steps away.

“Have you been lying to our dear little Rin this whole time, Maki?”

“ _No.”_ Yes.

“Of course Rin wouldn’t know any better, since she probably doesn’t know what a real unicorn smells like.” Nozomi clicks her tongue and shakes her head, but she’s still smiling with an infuriating twinkle in her eye. Maki thinks that maybe she’d rather be frowned at. “Right, Rin?”

“But the humans in the nearby village love Maki! She told me so! Cuz she’s a unicorn!”

But the gig is up. Rin might still be in disbelief but Nozomi and Hanayo could probably tell from the moment they saw her burrow. Real unicorns don’t live in dark dusty little burrows beneath trees, they live in flowery meadows beneath the open sky, prancing about like assholes. 

Maki buries her face in her hands and groans.

“It was for business. Humans don’t care about… my _kind_ , but they practically worship unicorns. You can’t blame me for deceiving them like that.”

“Nooo, we can’t.” Nozomi’s grinning now, just waiting for Maki to finally admit the final piece of the truth. “So…?”

Maki glances between her, Hanayo, and Rin. Is it still to late to consider running? Yes. Gods, her face is burning up, which is obviously only making things worse for herself. She’d been so careful all this time too, living in a secluded part of the forest, careful about keeping her burrow hidden, never letting any humans follow her home… taking care of Rin was clearly the first of many big mistakes that snowballed into this final reveal.

Not that she truly regrets saving Rin’s life, but still.

She sighs a heavy sigh. “…I’m a gnome.”

Rin makes a face, swallowing another mouthful of boar meat. “What?”

“I’m a _gnome!_ I use my magic to disguise myself! The horn is just a fake! Now leave me alone!”

For the first time since she’s met her, Rin’s face lights up and she laughs a _real_ laugh, full of joy (but she’s also just laughing at Maki, partly) and all of that vague guilt and hesitance that’s been plaguing her all this time finally gone, and Maki thinks this might not be so bad after all, even with Hanayo politely covering her horrid grin and Nozomi chortling.

“So, so can you still attach Rin’s tail back, then?” Rin asks.

“Oh… no, I can’t. Sorry.”

“Oh.”


End file.
